The Leonardo Laser talk (Tuesday, June 25, 2024, from 3.30-5.30 pm) at Brisbane Convention Centre was a great success art ISEA – and it was a very enjoyable occasion working with the wonderful Brett Leavy and Kelly Greenopp, chaired by: Dr. Anastasia Tyurina.
Fellow Speaker Brett Leavy descends from the Kooma people whose traditional country is bordered by St George in the east, Cunnamulla to the west, north by the town of Mitchell and south to the Queensland/NSW border. As a multimedia producer and Indigenous advocate, Brett heads up Australia’s leading First Nations social impact cultural design company– Bilbie Virtual Labs(link is external), designing an innovative and connective program known as Virtual Songlines – a suite of immersive, interconnected multi-user virtual heritage simulations that showcase the history and heritage of fifty cities and regional towns across Australia.
Dr Kelly Greenop is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Queensland’s School of Architecture, Design and Planning. Her research is in Digital Cultural Heritage, utilises 3D laser scanning of heritage environments to document and archive fragile, remote and at-risk heritage sites, and research the use of digital heritage.
The purpose of the panel discussion was to delve into innovative approaches for advocating, preserving, and celebrating Australian Culture and Country in the digital age, highlighting the transformative power of the arts as a catalyst for social and ecological change.
For this talk I spoke about the following topics:
The transformative power of the arts as a catalyst for
social and ecological change
Active Optimism ..
The world is in deep trouble
The world is getting better
The world can be much better still
AllyshipBuilding community – creating contexts for ethical and respectful
knowledge exchange around Care for Country
My/Our Creative Objectives:
Experimental practices inviting audiences to
envisage and experiment with pathways towards socially/ecologically- just & regenerative futures
Further Contexts/Inspiration/Working Spaces:
- Art+Ecological Science (field collaborations)
- Regeneration as a creative practice
- Sensitive advocacy for the ‘More than Human World’
- Integration of practice & ‘campaign’
How Intelligences (microbes, fungi, invertebrates, plants, ..) are each embodied & embedded – and mostly not like ‘us’ and mostly unknowable
So we should ask less: Are you like us? as more: What is it like to be you?
.. remembering .. there hasn’t been a single study in the past decade that shows animals or plants to be dumber than we thought
(Robin Wall Kimmerer)
Some Big Picture Questions:
Need to re-educate ourselves on many levels – reframing priorities
Can we transcend the narrow frequency of ‘being human’?
Use mediating technology to sense non humans’ time scales and (maybe) some part of their embodied, embedded intelligences
Because:
The ‘more than human world’ has answers to questions we struggle to even ask..
